Cadmar Larson with his son Kyle, the company president. A school teacher by trade, he has spent 10 years perfecting his invention, the StrideDeck, the "ultimate dry-land trainer" treadmill, in his Richmond garage. Thursday, August 09, 2012.Les Bazso
/ VANCOUVER SUN

Cadmar Larson with his sons Keenan, an avid StrideDeck user, and Kyle, the company president. A school teacher by trade, Larson has spent 10 years perfecting his invention, the StrideDeck, the "ultimate dryland trainer" treadmill, in his Richmond garage. Thursday, August 09, 2012.Les Bazso
/ VANCOUVER SUN

Let’s call it the StrideDeck equation: Seven kids in hockey + a dad spilling over with ideas + a fireball mom = a skating practice tool that just might take off.

First, the StrideDeck. It’s a series of interlocking, heavy-duty plastic frames filled with rollers. It’s usually set up in a V-formation measuring about four feet, 1.2 metres, on each side. Athletes wearing runners or hockey skates get a workout by pushing their feet backward against the rollers which create more resistance than ice, but still allow for a gliding motion.

The high price of youth hockey is the reason Cadmar Larson of Richmond came up with the idea for the StrideDeck about 10 years ago. The on-call elementary school teacher said Thursday he wanted to create something that would allow young players on a budget to practise without expensive extra ice time or summer hockey camps. And to hear his wife April tell the story, it could make Canada a better place.

“If you make [hockey] an exclusive sport that excludes other kids, that erodes our quality of life,’ says April Larsen, a SeaBus captain.“Hockey really supported the character development of our kids and I wouldn’t like to see kids excluded because of their parents’ income.”

The latest version of their StrideDeck sells for $350, down substantially from the $2,500- and $900-versions Cadmar can pull out of his garage, which is packed with all the machinery needed to manufacture the device. He buys specially made rollers and frame material from suppliers in Canada and the U.S. and puts it all together at the family home on a rural street near the Steveston Highway.

Getting all those kids — aged from 12 to 25 — to help out at least provides some cheap labour for the project.

Twenty-three-year-old Kyle Larson, the oldest of five sons, is doing his part by working with a friend to revamp StrideDeck’s website — stridedeck.ca — while also studying geology at the University of British Columbia and working as a lifeguard this summer.

“It’s really a story about growth,” says Kyle who plays hockey through UBC’s intramural league.

Over the years, his father — who holds three U.S. patents and is applying for an international patent for the StrideDeck — has created five prototypes of the StrideDeck. He sent early versions to athletes and teams in Canada — including the Canucks — and Europe to test and then offer critiques. Feedback from the Canucks’ trainer was used to develop future prototypes.

The next stage will be a move out of the garage and into a proper commercial setting in the next few months, Kyle says. Right now, they can still keep up with orders on their own — four this week and 200 so far this year — most of them from word-of-mouth recommendations. But they’d like to see the StrideDeck in sports stores where potential customers can jump on and give it a go. That would mean higher production.

Keenan Larson, 14, the official StrideDeck demonstrator, says it’s increased his power as a skater. The resistance builds muscle and he practises stickhandling moves at the same time.

“It kind of gives you a superior edge,” says Keenan. “No one can catch me.”

The limitation of the StrideDeck is that it can only mimic a forward skating motion, not crossovers or backward skating. However, that same motion is used by other customers who are cross-country skiers and roller derby skaters. Part of Kyle’s mission in updating the website is to give clearer instructions about how to do use it for other low impact exercises — with weights, for instance.

But hockey families are still the main target market for now, even if Cadmar — “the visionary,” as his son calls him – has other ideas about jumping on the active-gaming trend. He’s been talking to people in that industry about ways to linking his invention to electronic games.

“Kyle says, ‘Dad, get real. You’re dreaming. Get down from Mars.’ He keeps telling me, ‘Step by step.”

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